North Sumatra – Members of the parliamentary (DPR) fact-finding team in Aceh held a meeting at the office of the NGO, WALHI, in Bandar Aceh to receive testimony from victims of violations in Aceh. They were moved to tears from some of the testimony they heard.
A 70-year-old man named Tengku Abdurrachman Ali, the father of seven children, said he had been tortured for three days and nights at the Kopassus command post in Gedong Aron, Guelumpung Tiga sub-district, Pidie district. He was arrested early in 1998 on charges of concealing arms in his home.
He was stripped naked, given electric shocks and his tormentors try to bury him alive. He was immersed in soil but a heavy rock shifted, dispersing the soil and setting him free. When he was lifted out and found to be alive he was shut up in a toilet for two hours with his hands and feet bound and was again given electric shocks.
He told the team he had seen women being tortured and given electric shocks on their sex organs. He also said he had seen seven corpses being loaded onto a vehicle from the Kopassus command post, but did not know where they had been taken.
Another victim of Kopassus atrocities to testify was Ibrahim, 32 years old from North Aceh. Besides the usual tortures, an attempt was made to strangle him. The soldiers though he was dead but when they realised he was still alive, he was taken to Jalan Takengon and thrown into a ditch. Wearing only his pants and covered in blood, he managed to drag himself out of the ditch and started walking the long distance to Bireum. He was picked up on the way by a motor-cyclist and taken to hospital where he was treated for thirty days.
Seven widows also testified, saying that their husbands had disappeared without trace. Several had been taken into custody and subjected to inhuman treatment.
Speaking for the Aceh NGO Forum, Maimun Fidar said that they estimated that no fewer than 39,000 people had disappeared in Aceh since 1989. The NGOs and a journalist from the publication GATRA had undertaken the investigations.
Maimun also said they were able to identify nine places where mass graves were located. He gave the locations and mentioned the number of persons believed to have been buried in each of these mass graves. The numbers ranged between 30 and 300. He said that most of the disappearances occurred in 1991 and 1992. Hari Sabarno, a lieutenant-general member of Parliament said he would seek assurances from the local military commander that those who had given evidence would be protected from reprisals.
Suara Pembaruan - 30 July 1998
Jakarta – Dozens of students who are members of Student Solidarity for Aceh visited the UN office in Jakarta on 30 July to urge the UN to take up the Aceh case and press the Indonesian government to take action on the violence which had occurred during the time since the region had become a "military operational region" (DOM).
In a statement the organisation said the sufferings of the Acehnese people had started in 1989 when DOM was introduced. There was no legal security and numerous arrests have taken place without respect for the procedures and with no one being tried. All this had been done in the name of crushing the Aceh Freedom Movement, GAM, although there was little evidence that the Movement was in fact active. The group urged the UN to send a fact-finding mission to Aceh and called on it to help secure the release of political prisoners in the region.
The organisation has also called on the Supreme Commander (Habibie) to withdraw all troops from the region because they have caused such sufferings for the people. The group's other demand was for the government to grant amnesty to the many Acehnese who had fled abroad in face of intimidation and the threat of arrest.
"The government should take action to change the perception around the world that the people of Aceh are involved in a militant Muslim separatist movement," said FAjrain Zain on behalf of the student group. The group was hoping to meet the deputy representative of the UNDP later the same day.
[On August 6, Reuters reported that several dozen Acehnese youths demonstrated in front of parliament in Jakarta calling for an objective report from the fact-finding team on what they had seen and heard in Aceh - James Balowski.]